As fascism spreads across 1930s Europe, Zoli Novotna, a young Gypsy poet, and her grandfather seek refuge with a clan of Romani harpists, where her fame as a poet leads to estrangement from her family, exploitation by the ruling Communists, and a flight to the West as she struggles to find where she truly belongs, in a novel loosely based on the life of Romani poet Papsuza